


It's Still and Silent in the Cold, Dark Room

by nctinee



Series: Erlebnisse [14]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Bruh this shit hurted, Child Neglect, I feel like this work is the definition of Fake Deep, I would say light angst but I still don't really know what angst is, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, It Gets Better, Late night thoughts, Spoilers for BoJack Horseman kind of, Starting off strong aren't we, This is... odd, What is this?, Yangyang is thinking bout stuff, tags are a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23606548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nctinee/pseuds/nctinee
Summary: Yangyang wakes up at 2 a.m. and can't fall back asleep.So he turns on the ceiling fan and lays on the floor with his earbuds plugged in and a post-rock playlist feeding into his ears, watching the blades spin round and round.
Series: Erlebnisse [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1418836
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	It's Still and Silent in the Cold, Dark Room

**Author's Note:**

> from 10:20 p.m. to 1:31 a.m. i stare at a white screen with a headache pulsing behind my eyes and post-rock thrumming in my ears, but i still can't bring myself to close my eyes and let sleep drag me under

_**2:13 a.m**_  
Yangyang wakes up at 2 a.m. and can't fall back asleep.

So he turns on the ceiling fan, even though it's the weird in-between of Christmas and New Years and his room is already freezing, and lays on the floor with his earbuds plugged in and a post-rock playlist feeding into his ears, watching the blades spin round and round.

_**2:49 a.m**_  
The playlist stops so he picks his phone up from where it was laying next to his head and finds another one, only a few minutes longer than the first. He puts the phone down and goes back to staring at the fan.

He dully wonders what his dad would say if he found his son laying on the floor in the middle of the night blankly staring at nothing. Would he yell? Would he ask what was wrong? Or would he just stare in the way that dads do, unbothered and uncaring? Yangyang doesn't want to know, but finds that he can't be bothered to get up. The stiff floor is oddly more comforting than his bed.

_**3:03 a.m.**_  
His eyes slide over to a pile of books on the floor that he's been meaning to read, but has never gotten around to.

And by never gotten around to, he means he just _doesn't_ want to, even though he does. It's confusing. He can't find the motivation to, even though he's been meaning to read those books for months. _Ugh_.

 _That's what's wrong with us as a human race,_ he thinks, _we don't do the things we say we want to do because we don't want things to change. We want our lives to stay the same so it doesn't get harder, or so the pain doesn't get worse. We go round and round in circles because we like familiarity, and that's unhealthy. Somehow we've become masters of doing unhealthy things to ourselves._

_Read the damn books, Yangyang._

He never does.

_**3:22 a.m.**_  
He doesn't know why he started thinking about it, but the episode where BoJack speaks at his mother's funeral in _BoJack Horseman_ comes to mind.

His own mother isn't dead, no, she's just down the hall across from the bathroom, getting as much sleep as she can before she has to start another 10 hour shift at the hospital. Sometimes it feels like she's dead though, unmoving in her bed when he walks in to ask her something insignificant,

-it's always insignificant with him. He feels like he's insignificant, always bumbling around with words spewing out of his mouth until he's told to go to his room or talk to his friends instead. Maybe if he thinks insignificant enough the word _itself_ will be insignificant, becoming smaller and more useless that no one uses it anymore and finds a new word that means the same thing. He feels like that sometimes, but never tells anyone because, well, you get it-

wine glass half empty and a bottle of Zoloft and Aspirin next to it. He sees her some mornings, dreary and dead-eyed at the kitchen table with thin fingers circling the rim of a bottle with the label peeled off; but he sees her most nights in the same position, same look in her eyes and same fingers running over the rim of a drink, only this time it's red wine. She's less of a mother and more of a ghost, but he loves her all the same, though he doesn't understand why.

A quote from that episode of _BoJack Horseman_ comes to mind, "And that's what losing a parent is like. It's like _Becker_. Suddenly, you realize you'll never have the good relationship you wanted, and as long as they were alive, even though you'd never admit it, part of you, the stupidest goddamn part of you, was still holding on to that chance. And you didn't even realize it until that chance went away."

But it hasn't gone away. She's still here, still in that same room with the same eyes and same fingers, chance waiting to be taken. Because she isn't dead.

Sometimes he wishes she was.

_**3:36 a.m.**_  
He has to change the playlist again, something that's an hour long because he doesn't want to keep looking at his phone. There's notifications that pop up from the _**2000 zoomer**_ group chat every once and a while, but he doesn't bother answering. He doesn't feel like talking to them right now, even though his mind is painfully empty and begging to be filled. 

His fingers twitch to grab the phone again, but he stops himself, just watching as the blades go round and round and round and round and round and round and.

He doesn't realize he started crying, but it doesn't stop, not for a long time.

_**4:00 a.m.** _   
_"Oh oh oh oh_   
_No, no, no, no, no, no, no_   
_Oh, mama mia, mama mia (Mama mia, let me go.)_   
_Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me._

_So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?_   
_So you think you can love me and leave me to die?_   
_Oh, baby, can't do this to me, baby,_   
_Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here."_

**_4:19 a.m._**  
His eyes are tired, but he never once looks away from the fan. He stopped getting notifications a while ago, but the last time he looked at his phone to skip an add he saw he had a text from Renjun, but that was over half an hour ago.

Renjun would understand. He does this a lot too.

 _But what is "this"? What am I doing?_

He doesn't know.

_**4:20 a.m.**_  
4:20

_Ha._

He changes the playlist.

_**4:41 a.m.**_  
When he looks around the room and at all the shadows on the walls, he doesn't think about how eerie they look or how daunting his room seems at night.

It's not like in fairytales where the protagonist is like, "Oh how scary the tree branches look at night! They seem to form some sort of... monster-like shape that makes me too frightened to sleep!" It's more nostalgic in a twisted way, that these are the shadows that make up his room, his entire _life_ in this little box, and that he feels more safe in here at this ungodly hour than anywhere else.

He likes his shadows. They're always there for him when no one else is.

_**5:27 a.m.**_  
His phone dies a few minutes after he checks the time. Without the music there, he feels like he's floating in abyss of nothingness, no rope to keep him close to shore. It's just him and his thoughts now, no gentle strumming of a guitar to keep the bad thoughts away, though he supposes they already got to him.

He thinks he hears a creak of the floorboards down the hall, though he's not sure because it's so loud in his head from his thoughts whizzing around.

Maybe one of his parents will have half a mind to check on him, make sure that he isn't drowning in his own mind, but he knows they're too busy trying to do the same.

Everyone is drowning nowadays, but there aren't enough people to help pull them to shore. 

Maybe drowning is better than waiting for someone who will never be there.

Maybe.

_**5:49 a.m**_  
He falls asleep then, eyes drooping shut as the fan keeps spinning. He feels some sort of peace, just before he slips into a dream, from laying in his room for hours with nothing but music and the carpet to keep him company. There's no worries, nothing to lay on his shoulders like weights that he'll carry around for days. It's just... nothing.

_**6:04 a.m.**_  
He is still asleep on the floor when the door creaks open and the tired face of his mother appears in the crack, his father's hand on her shoulder.

His father moves past his mother into the room and gently lifts the boy, then carefully drops him onto his bed and drapes his comforter over his body while his mother picks up his phone and plugs it into the charger. They each kiss him once on the forehead, his mother smoothing his bangs out of his eyes before moving away. His father says he'll start breakfast, then leaves with a gentle kiss on his wife's temple.

His mother hesitates though, just before the doorframe, and looks at her son, _really_ looks at him, and smiles slightly. She turns the fan off and leaves the room, door clicking shut behind her.

The fan stops spinning.

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is best just reading once and never coming back to because it's just too painful to look at again. I dunno, I think I'm just trying to be deep.
> 
> Just an fyi, some of the longer paragraphs and one liners that are italicized are Yangyang's thoughts. You probably figured that out but,, yaknow,,
> 
> Listen to some post-rock if you have time. There's a YT playlist called "it is one of those nights" because it is certainly one of those nights for me. Maybe it is for you too, and in that case, I hope you get better. Know that I am here, with you, in this moment, and that even though we are miles and miles away from each other, we're connected, for however long that this moment may be.


End file.
